Doing the Pioneering Thing.

There was no house on our 250 acres of wilderness. There was no connected electricity, no running water, no sewage system and no phone. We had no refrigeration, no washing machine. It was going to be an interesting five years.

We were off the main road. To reach our block, we had to travel ten kilometres of dirt, some of it very loose and very steep (seriously scary on a motorbike). We landed there about 3:00 in the afternoon. Greg unhooked the trailer of gear and parked it on the roadside – we didn’t have a driveway as yet – and then he disappeared back down the road to go and fetch the second hand caravan we would use as our home until we could build one.

That left me sitting on the side of a hill as watchdog for our things, guarding two cats in cat carriers and filling in time plotting plots because I had nothing else to do except swat the march flies that tried to bite me.

By 7:00 I was still there alone. Not a single car had come by and it was getting dark. Something was happening, though. I had moved some of our things up the slope where there was some shade in the subtropical climate and a view down the road. Something was coming.

I’ll be honest, what I saw down the road and heading my way scared me. It was a pack of dingoes. Dingoes can be dangerous and these ones had clearly interbred, mixing with German Shepherd most noticeably. Big dogs. Smart dogs.